


what you’re fighting for

by NeverNooitNiet



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Cold War, Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 19:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19363090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverNooitNiet/pseuds/NeverNooitNiet
Summary: Crowley took a slow drag of his cigarette, letting the smoke curl into the grey sky.“Well,” he said dryly. His current corporation, a pale, peaky thing, had acquired a soft Soviet burr. “This certainly doesn’t appear to be a metaphor for anything.”





	what you’re fighting for

The duck pond at St James’ park had long been a clandestine meeting place for two distinct sorts of beings: spies, shady government agents and the like, and a pair of supernatural entities.

At this precise moment in time, the two men staring gloomily at the ducks— or at least, two beings that, from a distance, very much gave the impression of being men— were, in a very nice and accurate sense, both.

Crowley took a slow drag of his cigarette, letting the smoke curl into the grey sky.

“ _Well_ ,” he said dryly. His current corporation, a pale, peaky thing, had acquired a soft Soviet burr. “This certainly doesn’t appear to be a metaphor for anything.”

Aziraphale shot him a sharp look.

“I know precisely what you’re insinuating,” he said tightly, “and you can forget it. Our sides are much more— _defined_ , as it were.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Crowley. “Capitalism versus Communism, Heaven versus Hell. Seems fairly similar to me.”

The angel curled his small, plump fingers around his own cigarette and waved it in Crowley’s general direction with a flat attempt at hostility.

“But crucially, I think you’re forgetting, we are Good versus Evil. We— well, I, at any rate— have a righteous purpose. The closest I can find in these Americans is the desire for money, which is hardly altruistic.”

Crowley pondered this over for a moment.

“Hmmm,” he said vaguely. “Purpose, or justification?”

“I am enacting Her will,” Aziraphale snapped.

Crowley inclined his head.

“Indisputably,” he said, and if there was any irony in his voice, he hid it masterfully. “Only, isn’t that precisely what the Americans think they’re doing? Fighting the godless communists, and all that.”

Aziraphale sighed, the chill wind teasing his curls this way and that.

“Well, yes, on paper, which I assume is the reason for me being assigned to them. I can’t for the life of me think of any other redeeming factors.”

“At least you didn’t get the cold one,” groused Crowley. “I mean, really, I reckon even you’d struggle to get through Siberia in the winter, and you do have the small advantage of being warm-blooded. I’m doing my best, but if I discorporate of my own accord in the middle of a fucking gulag, someone _is_ going to notice.”

They were quiet for a moment. Aziraphale miracled up some bread and threw it to the ducks.

“Are you getting a lot done, then?”

“Don’t have to,” Crowley said gloomily. “Between the Kremlin and the secret police and the like they seem to have this Evil business pretty well covered all by themselves.” He took another drag of his cigarette, pulled his heavy coat slightly tighter round his slim frame. “And yours?”

“Quite the opposite problem, I’m afraid,” said Aziraphale, throwing the bread into the pond with perhaps a touch more force than was strictly necessary. “It’s... they’re so utterly convinced of their own superiority, that they think it entitles them to do— oh, anything they like, really.” Crowley quirked an eyebrow at that, but said nothing. Aziraphale soldiered on, determined to get it all out, now. “And the way they _treat_ people. I mean, just looking at the government, like you said, there’s this whole McCarthy business— to find communists, allegedly, but it’s so _baseless_. Just sowing panic.” His voice wavered slightly. “And they’re going after— my people.”

Aziraphale, by virtue of his not being a person, by all rights shouldn’t have a people, but over the millennia he’d become closely affiliated with the queer community wherever he happened to be at the time— well, so had Crowley, to some extent, but Aziraphale had the advantage in that he was allowed, in some capacity, to care about humans. To help them. Moreover, his was a relationship that had become firmly cemented when Crowley slept away the 19th century and Aziraphale had found himself in unexpected need of some company.

Crowley sighed.

“Yes, I’m afraid my lot aren’t much better on that count.”

Aziraphale stubbed out his cigarette and shook his head mournfully.

“All of that’s nothing compared to the discrimination, the racism and the, the _hate_ , which is everywhere. I’m trying, I am, but I can’t help everyone, and most people are either so afraid or so indoctrinated that it’s nigh on impossible to get anyone else to do a bloody thing. And all their leaders care about is trying to manufacture the biggest, most destructive weapons possible.”

“It’s funny, in a way,” mused Crowley. “I mean, we’ve always known the world would end eventually, but this is the first time I’ve really thought they might do it to themselves.”

Aziraphale tilted his head back, looked up at the impenetrable wall of grey cloud above him.

“It’s been an eventful old century, hasn’t it?”

“And we’re only about halfway through. Almost makes you miss the fourteenth.”

“Almost,” the angel said quietly. He threw down the last of his bread, and turned to his counterpart. “Shall we do the Ritz?”

Crowley gave a sharp grin and shook his head reproachfully.

“Typical bourgeois decadence, that,” he said archly. Aziraphale's face sank, just slightly, and Crowley watched with something like concern. Then he shrugged. “Yeah, all right.”

Aziraphale smiled. They linked arms, and off they went.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Cold War by Janelle Monàe, thanks so much for reading xxx


End file.
